Perils for the Postmodern Society

(continued)
Sure, one can argue that “terrorism” might strike at any moment, but realistically, the chances of being involved in a terrorist attack like 9/11 are literally 3030:250,000,000 (or 1 in 100,000) per year, should 9/11 actually happen once a year. Realistically, foreign terrorist attacks only occur around once a decade, so given one’s absolutely best-case lifespan, 100 years, the zeros cancel and you’re left with a 1:100,000 chance of dying in a terrorist attack during your lifetime. Sadly, your chances are better of dying in a car accident (1:80) than getting blown away by some Middle Eastern zealot. So terrorism, while it does play into the hands of power-hungry politicians, clearly is not a threat to the society as a whole, unless it’s used as an excuse to create a dictatorship.

Terrorism aside, we live in a pretty sterile environment. Comparatively, we still have all of the woes that every other society who actually has had an enemy had—that is, murder, theft, and all the other petty, intra-societal issues. But, our country no longer has an actual enemy. Russia, or more specifically, the USSR, was our last societal enemy, and once they collapsed like a flan in a cupboard, they left us twiddling our thumbs. North Korea, while crazy, is more concerned about its small political penis size and lack of actual economic power than actually attempting to nuke us; for, they know that in the end, they’d be the ones a few miles below the Pacific Ocean. Thus, we’re the only ones now, and we have no realistic opposition.

So what happens? We invent enemies. Not real enemies, mind you, but enemies that are just plausible enough to satisfy our animal instincts that have become so habituated to the impending threat of an invader. Otherwise trivial matters take center stage as the destroyers of life as we know it. One of the non-religious arguments against gay marriage, for example, is that it will decimate the population. Somehow, by letting guys marry each other, all of the otherwise straight guys, now given legal ability, will break out in buttsecks throughout America, and the women will engage in carpet-licking fests, and no more children will be produced, thus destroying the nation.

Right—because that’s logical. But you see, it doesn’t need to be logical to satisfy our starving paranoia. We need something, anything, to make us feel like there’s something evil out there, and that we’re doing something to combat it.

The arguments for intelligent design are far from intelligent, as well. At the root, a good handful of Christians truly believe the scientific community is out to brainwash their children into being godless heathens, motivated no longer by the pursuit of God but by the influence of Satan, and they must fight back with everything they have—even if it’s trying to prove a 2,000 year old book true using sketchy pseudo-science and doublespeak.

Neither is this logical. The Scopes trial ended almost a century ago, and the debate has long been over. Of course, back then, we still actually did have enemies—real enemies—that were going to destroy our way of life. A couple decades later, had Hitler actually gained control over Great Britain, our lives truly would have changed. But, people forget that evolution has been around for ages, and conceivably has made our country what it is today. They forget that the children that were taught evolution because of the Scopes trial were the actual adults that created the golden 50’s and consequently the pseudo-reality to which many of the opponents of evolution wish to return.

But logic doesn’t matter. Again, all they’re looking for is to invent their demon so that we can once again have a threat to be afraid of.

And it continues: airport security wasn’t able to prevent some ingenious guys from making pseudo-bombs out of modeling clay and using box-cutting knives to assault the crew, so what makes us think it’s going to help the next time around when someone makes a fake bomb “explode” using baking soda and vinegar to do the exact same thing? Will taking off our shoes really prevent terrorists from using our own lust for fear against us? No—of course not.

It’s all illogical, but at least it makes us feel like we’re protecting ourselves from that archaic prototypical enemy, when realistically, by the numbers, the terrorists are actually less threatening to us than ourselves; after all, remember my little romp in statistics earlier? You’re more likely to be killed by a fellow American—that is, more than 1,000 times more likely—than being killed by a terrorist.

Really, it’s no surprise that the majority of the “perils” of our post modern society are more tests of logic than actual perils. After all, logic is both the natural enemy and friend of emotion, yet all the while fear remains overwhelmingly an emotional state. Make no mistake, though—fear isn’t all-emotion; for, fear also retains a logical component. After all, it’s difficult to truly hate dogs until you’ve been bitten. Logic helps to prevent you from being bitten again, while fear keeps you away from even the friendliest of dogs. Once the logical component overcomes fear’s emotional component, however, fear loses its meaning. Once you realize that the only truly mean dog was the one that bit you and only a small handful of others, you come to realize that not all dogs are bad—in fact, the majority of them are cool canines. Similarly, logic would abate the irrational fears of the masses in peril of “the evil gays,” “the terrorists,” and the “godless scientists,” but we can’t have that, can we? Because, then we’d be back where we started only a short while ago—without an enemy.

…and our humanity can’t stand the idea of being alone.